Editing Pope Pius XII (section)

===International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission===
{{Main|International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission}}
In 1999, in an attempt to address some of this controversy, the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission (Historical Commission), a group of three Catholic and three Jewish scholars was appointed, respectively, by the [[Holy See]]'s [[Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews]] (Holy See's Commission) and the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), to whom a preliminary report was issued in October 2000.<ref name="ICJHC">{{cite encyclopedia|title=The Vatican and the Holocaust: A Preliminary Report|author=International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission|year=2000|url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/vatrep.html|encyclopedia=Jewish Virtual Library}}</ref>

The Commission did not discover any documents, but had the agreed-upon task to review the existing Vatican volumes, that make up the ''Actes et Documents du Saint Siège (ADSS)''<ref>Preliminary Report, p. 2</ref> The commission was internally divided over the question of access to additional documents from the Holy See, access to the news media by individual commission members, and, questions to be raised in the preliminary report. It was agreed to include all 47 individual questions by the six members, and use them as Preliminary Report.<ref name="Gerard P Fogarty, Vatican/Holocaust">Fogarty, Gerard P., ''The Vatican and the Holocaust, Presentation to the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C.'', 9 December 2000</ref> In addition to the 47 questions, the commission issued no findings of its own. It stated that it was not their task to sit in judgment of the Pope and his advisors but to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the papacy during the Holocaust.<ref>Preliminary Report, p. 5</ref>

The 47 questions by the six scholars were grouped into three parts: (a) 27 specific questions on existing documents,<ref>Preliminary Report, pp. 5–10</ref> mostly asking for background and additional information such as drafts of the encyclical ''[[Mit brennender Sorge]]'', which was largely written by Eugenio Pacelli.<ref>Question One</ref> (b) Fourteen questions dealt with themes of individual volumes,<ref>Preliminary Report, pp. 10–13</ref> such as the question how Pius viewed the role of the church during the war.<ref>Question 28</ref> (c) Six general questions,<ref>Preliminary Report, pp. 13–14</ref> such as the absence of any anti-communist sentiments in the documents.<ref>Question 42</ref> The disagreement between members over additional documents locked up under the Holy See's 70-year rule resulted in a discontinuation of the commission in 2001 on friendly terms.<ref name="Gerard P Fogarty, Vatican/Holocaust"/> Unsatisfied with the findings, Michael Marrus, one of the three Jewish members of the commission, said the commission "ran up against a brick wall .... It would have been really helpful to have had support from the Holy See on this issue."<ref>Melissa Radler. "Vatican Blocks Panel's Access to Holocaust Archives". ''The Jerusalem Post''. 24 July 2001.</ref>

[[Peter Stanford]], a Catholic journalist and writer, wrote, regarding ''Fatal Silence: The Pope, the Resistance and the German Occupation of Rome'' (written by Robert Katz; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003):

{{Blockquote|[The Vatican] still refuses to open all its files from the period—which seems to me to be a conclusive admission of guilt—but Katz has winkled various papers out of God's business address on earth to add to the stash of new information he has uncovered in America in the archives of the Office of Strategic Services. From this we learn that, although Pius's defenders still say that he paid a golden ransom in a vain effort to save Rome's Jews from transportation to the death camps, the most he did was indicate a willingness to chip in if the Jews could not raise the sum demanded. He also shows that no individual Jews were spared, as is often claimed, after Pius personally intervened with the Nazis. Moreover, Katz reveals that those who did escape the Nazi round-up and found sanctuary in church buildings in Rome did so in the face of explicit opposition from the Vatican. The real heroes and heroines were the priests and nuns who refused to bow to Pius's officials and hand over the desperate people whom they were hiding. The main problem with writing about Pius's wartime is that in effect, he did nothing. Facing the murders of six million people, he remained silent. As Jews were taken away from the ghetto that sat right alongside St Peter's, he may have agonised, but he did not intervene. When he did raise his voice with the German occupiers, it was either to ensure that the Vatican City state would not be compromised—that is to say, he would be safe—or to emphasise his own neutrality in a conflict which, for many, became a battle between good and evil. His unrealistic hope was that the Catholic Church could emerge as the peacemaker across Europe. Instead, both the American and British leaderships, as Katz shows, regarded the papacy as tainted by its association with Nazism and irrelevant in the post-1945 reshaping of the continent. Both had urged Pius to speak up against the Holocaust and so drew their own conclusions about him. Far from being a saint, then, he was at best a fool, perhaps an anti-Semite and probably a coward.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.newstatesman.com/200310130045|title=Catholic guilt|last=Stanford|first=Peter J.|date=13 October 2003|access-date=8 January 2012|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080904222456/http://www.newstatesman.com/200310130045|archive-date=4 September 2008}} in review of ''Fatal Silence: The Pope, the Resistance and the German Occupation of Rome'', written by Robert Katz; {{ISBN|0-297-84661-2}}. Weidenfeld & Nicolson (2003)</ref>}}

Katz's book also discusses how the Pope's view of the anti-Nazi resistance—as harbingers of Communism—meant he chose not to intervene in the [[Ardeatine massacre]].<ref>{{Cite book |last= Katz |first= Robert |author-link= Robert Katz |year= 2003 |title= The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans, and the Pope, September 1943 – June 1944 |location=New York |publisher= [[Simon & Schuster]] |page= 249ff}}</ref>